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The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said on Thursday he had requested arrest warrants for the supreme leader of Afghanistan\u2019s Taliban government and the country\u2019s chief justice for their \u201cunprecedented\u201d persecution of Afghan women and girls.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor, Karim Khan, said in a statement that the Taliban\u2019s leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the head of Afghanistan\u2019s supreme court, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, had committed a crime against humanity: \u201cpersecution on gender grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQI+ community, are facing an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
Since U.S. troops pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban regained power, the fundamentalist rulers have issued ever-tightening codes of vice and virtue laws that have driven women entirely from public life and from many private activities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The edicts, presented as Muslim religious rules, have excluded women from jobs and almost all public areas. In 2023, the Taliban shut all beauty salons<\/a> \u2014 one of the few public places left in the country where women could congregate outside the home. Afghanistan also barred girls from high school and women from university education \u2014 the only country to do so.<\/p>\n A United Nations rapporteur has described the extreme regime as \u201cgender apartheid<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Many women have fled the country, and others are seeking ways to escape from their confined way of life<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The prosecutor\u2019s move is the first legal filing by the court, which is based in The Hague, to include the plight of L.G.B.T.Q.I.+ groups in a discrimination complaint. But it is not the first international legal attempt to pressure the Taliban to loosen their grip on Afghan women\u2019s lives<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last year, Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands took the Taliban to the International Court of Justice<\/a>, the United Nations\u2019 highest court, and denounced them for \u201cgross and systematic\u201d violations of the U.N. convention, ratified by Afghanistan, that forbids all forms of discrimination against women.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Other countries have since joined this case, which is winding its way through the World Court and is expected to lead to public hearings and, possibly, court orders.<\/p>\n